François Hollande, the Socialist favourite in the French presidential race, has batted off criticism from the far left over comments that there weren't many communists left in France.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left firebrand who has been rising in the polls on the back of President Nicolas Sarkozy's courting of the far-right vote, accused Hollande of having an "unbearably haughty attitude" towards the radical left in France. Mélenchon is polling at about 8% and is the candidate of a far-left front that includes the Communist party, once a major force in French politics. His voters would be expected to support Hollande in the election's second round run-off in May.

Right-wing opponents also jumped on Hollande's comments, which were made to British and American journalists, with the right-wing Le Figaro leading its front page with the row.

Hollande claimed that all he was doing was giving a historical explanation to the foreign press, pointing out how the current race was very different to François Mitterrand's election in 1981, when he came to power in coalition with the communists and had four communist ministers in his government.

In a lunch meeting with British and American journalists, Hollande, who recently said his only adversary in this election was the "world of finance", was asked about the fears of the right and international business when Mitterrand came to power in 1981.

Hollande said: "The 1980s was a different era. People said there would be Soviet tanks on the Place de la Concorde. That era is over, it's history. It's normal there were fears then. There had been 23 years of the right in power, the cold war was on and Mitterrand nominated communist ministers to government. Today there are no communists in France, or not many ... the left was in government for 15 years in which we liberalised the economy and opened up the markets to finance and privatisations. There is no big fear."

Hollande, who said his demands for more regulation of world finance were similar to those of Barack Obama, later told reporters in Saint-Étienne: "Yes, there is a Communist party, there are communists of course, but they are no longer what they were in 1981." Before they represented "20-22%; today they are around 10%. It has changed noticeably." Hollande said he wanted to rally "all sensibilities" on the left.

The once-powerful Communist party fielded their own candidate in the 2007 presidential election and took under 2% of the vote in the first round. This time, Mélenchon is standing for a broad Front de Gauche (Left Front) coalition. He also comes from a different background, outside the Communist party. A former Socialist minister of higher education who is famous for his fiery rhetoric, he is locked in a battle with the National Front's Marine Le Pen for the protest and working-class vote. Lately his scores have been rising.

A Communist spokesman said the party had 132,000 members and 10,000 elected representatives, from small villages to big towns. It has 19 deputies in parliament compared with more than 150 after the second world war.